V. I. Lenin

Written: Written at the end of 1895 for the newspaper Rabocheye Dyelo
Published:
First published in 1924.
Published according to a copy found in the archives of the Police Department.
Source:Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1972,
Moscow,
Volume 2,
pages 87-92.
Translated: Yuri Sdobnikov and George Hanna, Edited by George Hanna
Transcription\Markup:D. WaltersPublic Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive
(2000).
You may freely copy, distribute,
display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
Archive” as your source.

Ministerof Internal Affairs Durnovo wrote a letter to Procurator General
of the Holy
Synod[1]
Pobedonostsev. The letter, numbered 2603, was written on March 18, 1895,
and bears the inscription “strictly confidential.” The
minister, therefore, wanted the letter to remain a strict secret. But
there proved to be people who do not share the minister’s views that
Russian citizens should not know the government’s intentions, with
the result that a handwritten copy of this letter is now circulating
everywhere.

Whatdid Mr. Durnovo write to Mr. Pobedonostsev about?

Hewrote to him about the Sunday
schools.[2]
The letter reads:
“Information secured during recent years goes to show
that, following the example of the
sixties,[3]
politically unreliable individuals and also a section of the student youth
of a certain trend, are endeavouring to enter the Sunday schools as
teachers, lecturers, librarians, etc. This concerted attempt, which cannot
be inspired by a desire to earn money since the duties in such schools are
undertaken gratis, proves that the activity above indicated, on the part
of anti-government elements, constitutes a legal means of struggle against
the system of state and public order existing in Russia.”

Thatis how the minister argues. Among educated people there are those who
want to share their knowledge with the workers, who want their knowledge
to be of benefit not to themselves alone, but to the people—and the
minister immediately decides that there are “anti-government
elements” here, i.e. that it is conspirators of some kind who
are inciting people to enter the Sunday schools. Could not the desire to
teach others really arise in the minds of some educated people without
incitement? But the minister is disturbed because the Sunday-school
teachers get no salaries. He is accustomed to the spies and officials in
his service only working for their salaries, working for whoever pays them
best, whereas all of a sudden people work, render services, teach, and all
... gratis. Suspicious! thinks the minister, and sends spies to explore the
matter. The letter goes on to say: “It is established from the
following information” (received from spies, whose existence is
justified by the receipt of salaries) “that not only do persons of a
dangerous trend find their way into the teachers’ranks, but often
the schools themselves are under the unofficial direction of a whole group
of unreliable persons, who have no connection at all with the official
personnel, who deliver lectures in the evenings and give lessons to the
pupils on the invitation of the men and women teachers they themselves
have installed there.... The fact that outside people are allowed to give
lectures offers full scope for the infiltration of persons from frankly
revolutionary circles as lecturers.”

Sothen, if “outside people,” who have not been endorsed and
examined by priests and spies, want to give lessons to workers—that
is downright revolution! The minister regards the workers as gunpowder,
and knowledge and education as a spark; the minister is convinced that if
the spark falls into the gunpowder, the explosion will be directed first
and foremost against the government.

Wecannot deny ourselves the pleasure of noting that in this rare instance
we totally and unconditionally agree with the views of His Excellency.

Furtherin his letter the minister cites “proofs” of the
correctness of his “information.” Fine proofs they are!

Firstly,“a letter of a Sunday-school teacher whose name has still
not been ascertained.” The letter was confiscated during a
search. It refers to a programme of history lectures, to the idea of the
enslaving and emancipation of the social estates, and reference is made to
the revolt of Razin and of
Pugachov.[5]

Evidentlythese latter names scared the good minister so much that he very
likely had a nightmare of peasants armed with pitchforks.

Thesecond proof:

“TheMinistry of Internal Affairs is in possession of a programme,
privately received, for public lectures in a Moscow Sunday school on the
following points:‘The origin of society. Primitive society. The
development of social organisation. The state and what it is needed
for. Order. Liberty. Justice. Forms of political structure. Absolute and
constitutional monarchy. Labour—the basis of the general
welfare. Usefulness and wealth. Production, exchange and capital. How
wealth is distributed. The pursuit of private interest. Property and the
need for it. Emancipation of the peasants together with the land. Rent,
profit, wages. What do wages and their various forms depend on?
Thrift.’

“Thelectures in this programme, which is undoubtedly unfit for an
elementary school, give the lecturer every opportunity gradually to
acquaint his pupils with the theories of Karl Marx, Engels, etc., while
the person present on behalf of the diocesan authorities will hardly be in
a position to detect the elements of Social-Democratic propaganda in the
lectures.”

Theminister is evidently very much afraid of the “theories of Marx
and Engels,” if he notices “elements” of them even in
the sort of programme where not a trace of them is to be seen. What did
the minister find “unfit” in it? Very likely the problem of
the forms of political structure and the constitution.

Justtake any geography textbook, Mr. Minister, and you will find those
problems dealt with there! May adult workers not know the things that
children are taught?

Butthe minister places no reliance on persons from the Diocesan
Department: “They will very likely fail to understand what is
said.”

Theletter ends with an enumeration of the “unreliable”
teachers at the parish Sunday school of the Moscow mill of the Prokhorov
Textile Company, the Sunday school in the town of Yelets and the proposed
school in Tiflis. Mr. Durnovo advises Mr. Pobedonostsev to undertake
“a detailed check
of the individuals permitted to take classes in the schools.” Now,
when you read the list of teachers, your hair stands on end: all you get
is ex-student, again an ex-student, and still again an ex-student of
Courses for Ladies. The minister would like the tutors to be ex-drill
sergeants.

Itis with particular horror that the minister says that the school in
Yelets “is situated beyond the river Sosna, where the population is
mainly the common” (o horror!) “and working people, and where
the railway workshops are.”

Theschools must be kept as far away as possible from the “common
and working people.”

Workers!You see how mortally terrified are our ministers at the working
people acquiring knowledge! Show everybody, then, that no power will
succeed in depriving the workers of class-consciousness! Without knowledge
the workers are defenceless, with knowledge they are a force!

Notes

[1]
STRANGE: NOT IN EITHER PROGRESS PUBLISHER EDITION ...
The Holy Synod–the highest administrative body of the Russian orthodox
church. It also supervised the ecclesiastical educational establishments,
the divinity teaching in schools, etc. It was headed by a civic
Procurator-General.
—Lenin

[2]
STRANGE: NOT IN EITHER PROGRESS PUBLISHER EDITION ...
Sunday schools–schools for adults in pre-revolutionary Russia which
worked on Sundays and which people aimed to educate the illiterate and
semi-literate adult people. Their organisers and teachers came from among
progressive intellectuals who did this work free of charge. Revolutionary
Social-Democrats used these schools for the political education of the
workers.
—Lenin

[3]
STRANGE: NOT IN EITHER PROGRESS PUBLISHER EDITION ...
Lenin refers to representatives of the revolutionary movement in
Russia in the 1860s.
—Lenin

[4]
“What Are Our Ministers Thinking About?”—an article
Lenin intended for the newspaper Rabotnik Dyelo (The Workers’
Cause). An issue of the paper was prepared by the St. Petersburg
League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class by agreement
wit the Narodnaya Volya group. The first issue of Rabotnik Dyelo
was prepared and edited by Lenin, who wrote all the main articles,
including the leading article “To the Russian Workers,”
“What Are Our Ministers Thinking About?”, “Frederick
Engels,” and “The Yaroslavl Strike in 1895.” Articles
were also written by other members of the St. Petersburg League of
Struggle, G. M. Krzhizhanovsky, A. A. Vaneyev, P. K. Zaporozhets,
L. Martov (Y. O. Zederbaum), and M. A. Silvin. Lenin wrote the following
regarding the first issue of Rabotnik Dyelo in his What Is To
Be Done?:

“Thisissue was ready to go to press when it was seized
by the gendarmes, who, on the night of December 8, 1895, raided the house
of one of the members of the group, Anatoly Alexeyevich Vaneyev, and so
the original Rabotnik Dyelo was not destined to see the light of
day. The leading article in this issue (which perhaps
in some thirty years
time some Russkaya Starina [The Russian Antiquary] will
unearth in the archives of the Police Department) described the historical
tasks of the working class in Russia, and regarded the achievement of the
political liberty as the most important. This issue also contained an
article entitled ‘What Are Our Ministers Thinking About?’
which dealt with the breaking-up of the elementary education committees by
the police. In addition, there was some correspondence, not only from
ST. Petersburg, but from other parts of Russia, too (for example, a letter
about the assault on the workers in Yaroslavl Gubernia)” (see
What Is To Be Done, Chapter II).

Withthe exception of a copy of the article “What
Are Our Ministers Thinking About?“, discovered in January 1924 in
the Police Department records on the League of Struggle, the manuscripts
of these articles have not yet been found.

[5]Stepan Razin and Yemelyan Pugachov were the
leaders of extensive peasant revolts in Russia in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.